Vladimir Pletser
Space Operations Training Director

Vladimir Pletser (PhD, MSc, MEng) was from 2016 to 2018 Visiting Professor and Scientific Adviser to the Technology and Engineering Centre for Space Utilization of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, supporting Chinese Space Station and aircraft parabolic flight microgravity experiments. From 1985 until 2016, he was senior Physicist-Engineer at the European Space Research and Technology Centre of the European Space Agency, managing ISS microgravity payload development and ESA parabolic flight programme. He logged 7350 parabolas at 0g, Mars and Moon gravities on 12 aeroplanes (Guinness world record) during 90 campaigns on European, US and Russian aircraft, supervising 1000 experiments.

Astronaut candidate for Belgium, he spent two months in training in 1995 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and was Astronaut Training Instructor for parabolic flights and Spacelab missions. He participated in three Mars mission simulation campaigns in the Arctic and the Utah Desert.